Falling into Theory

Organized around three major questions of contemporary literary studies -- why we read literature, what we read in literature courses, and how we read or interpret literary texts -- Falling into Theory gives students a clear sense of what is at stake in current debates within English departments. Selections represent a wide range of critical schools, including new historicism, feminism and gender studies, reader-response criticism, ethical criticism, and postcolonial and cultural studies.

38 accessible scholarly selections introduce students to conflicting viewpoints on reading literature. Paired essays by Helen Vendler and Gerald Graff, bell hooks and Gertrude Himmelfarb, John Guillory and Harold Bloom engage students and draw them into the discussion about these debates.

Engaging apparatus places the selections in context and points students toward topics for discussion and writing. An overall introduction lays out the current debates in literary studies and discusses the social implications of these debates. Introductions to the book's three parts place the organizing questions in historical context and show how the selections (and critical schools) relate to one another. Headnotes for each selection help position authors in cultural and historical contexts.

Brief and inexpensive, the book allows instructors to bring the central questions of contemporary literary studies into their classrooms